China rebuffs U.S. ‘human rights’ study

By
G. Dunkel

Published Mar 13, 2006 10:29 PM

U.S ruling circles use concern over human rights as a political
and ideological weapon against anyone challenging them. The “human
rights” gambit was honed during the Cold War and now is employed against a
wide range of countries—from China and Russia to Belarus, Iran, Zimbabwe,
Venezuela and Cuba—to serve the needs of U.S. foreign policy.

One of
the highpoints of Washington’s use of this tactic is the annual State
Department report on human rights, released this year with grand fanfare March
8.

The U.S. government tries to use alleged human rights violations to
justify its interventions and threats to intervene. Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti
are three recent examples. This alleged concern for democracy and other high
ideals lets Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice say with a straight face:
“Our promotion of human rights and democracy is in keeping with
America’s most cherished principles and it helps to lay the foundation for
lasting peace in the world.”

But Abu Ghraib prison, with many of its
most horrifying photographs still under wraps; Guantanamo’s atrocities;
“secret” renditions of U.S. prisoners to be tortured by client
police states; the CIA’s boasts that the U.S. has developed
“touchless torture”; which relies on sensory overload or deprivation
to destroy a prisoner’s psyche; the death penalty, widely used by U.S.
courts, and the fiasco of Katrina have exposed U.S. hypocrisy to all the
world.

Members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC), which is China’s top advisory body, held a panel on the U.S.
report March 10, two days after it appeared, according to an English-language
dispatch from the news agency Xinhua. For the past seven years, China has
released a report on violations of human rights in the United States in response
to the one the U.S. State Department releases.

“The United States, a
self-proclaimed ‘human rights judge,’ has once again pointed its
fingers at others while totally ignoring its own problems,” said Zhao
Qizheng who formerly was minister in charge of the Information Office of the
State Council, the Chinese cabinet.

According to Yang Zhengquan, another
CPPCC member, the U.S. criticism on China has nothing to do with human rights
but aims at “undermining China’s socialist
system.”

“It’s nothing but dirty politics, which is
totally ideology-oriented,” he said. “The United States is
attempting to achieve its political goals under the pretext of human
rights.”

Chinese reply strikes home

China’s
report on U.S. violation of human rights is divided into seven parts: on life
and security of person; on infringements upon human rights by law enforcement
and judicial organs; on political rights and freedom; on economic, social and
cultural rights; on racial discrimination; on rights of women and children; and
on the United States’ violation of human rights in other
countries.

The report summarizes these issues from a perspective of a
different society and a different political system. For someone living in the
United States, it is painful to recall all the depravities and inequities
listed, including racism, homelessness, high homicide rates, violence against
women and the ever-rising level of incarceration in prison:

“As the
prisons in the U.S. were packed, the situation of prisoners worsened.

“During Hurricane Katrina, between Aug. 29 and Sept. 1, 2005,
correctional officers from the New Orleans Sheriff’s Department abandoned
600 inmates in a prison, as many were immersed in chest- and neck-level water
and left without food, water, electricity, fresh air, or functioning facilities
for four days and nights.”

The report concludes, “The United
States has always boasted it was the ‘model of democracy’ and hawked
its mode of democracy to the rest of the world. In fact, American
‘democracy’ is always one for the wealthy and a ‘game for the
rich’.”

The full Chinese report is available in English at
news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-03/09/content_4279166.htm.

The U.S. media
recently publicized the income disparity between rural and urban areas in China,
which does exist but ignore that the gap between richest and poorest in the
United States is far greater. The U.S. State Department’s report makes
much of the “disturbances” in rural areas that “are
suppressed.”

Chang Cheng, another member of the CPPCC, said that
Washington has long ignored the constant progress of human rights in
China.

This year the Chinese government announced several major
preferential policies to promote rural development, which will bring about
substantial benefits for the country’s 900 million farmers. “These
policies will help better guarantee the farmers’ right to subsistence and
development, which we believe is the primary right for every human being,”
Chang said.

Perhaps the State Department didn’t mention
China’s steps to achieve economic human rights for its citizens, because
at the same time the Bush administration and a majority from both parties in
Congress have enacted, along with sharp cuts in social services, tax cuts for
the rich that will increase still further the disparity between rich and poor in
the United States.

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